IN METEOROLOGY, the Perfect Storm was a rare weather event two decades ago when several forces - a high-pressure system, a low-pressure system and hurricane Grace - collided, devastating the US east coast.

In Victorian politics, Labor is searching for its own perfect storm: an equally unpredictable sequence of events that could spell disaster for Ted Baillieu at the next election.

One might call it wishful thinking. The last time Victoria had a one-term government was in 1955, when John Cain snr lost office as a result of the great Labor split. These days, our premiers are more likely to increase their majority the second time around.

Yet despite the odds, some Labor hardheads are starting to wonder: with the right combination of factors, maybe - just maybe - the idea of a one-term Ted isn't entirely fanciful.

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Picture this. It's 2014, the year of the Victorian election. Julia Gillard is no longer in power, giving state Labor the oxygen it needs to sell its message without the shadow of the federal brand. Baillieu's approval rating continues to slide while internal dissent over his leadership intensifies. The 2013 redistribution of electoral boundaries has notionally reduced the Coalition's already wafer-thin majority. And as polling day nears in November, issues such as TAFE cuts, job losses and broken promises continue to bite.

Right now, Victoria is less than halfway into a fixed four-year term; in that sense, anything could happen. But if Labor is to have any chance of winning, it will need more than just a perfect storm. It needs a credible policy agenda that cuts through with voters and presents Daniel Andrews - often referred to as ''Daniel Who'' - as a viable alternative.

Andrews is cognisant of the policy challenge. Within weeks of Labor's election loss, the Opposition Leader asked two rising stars on his backbench - Williamstown MP Wade Noonan and Brunswick MP Jane Garrett - to conduct a post-mortem on what went wrong.

The review is a refreshingly frank assessment of the policies both sides took to the 2010 campaign. After months of speaking to present and former MPs, Noonan and Garrett found several deficiencies in the former Brumby government's strategy.

Promises that lacked ''creative sparks''. An obsession with the Liberals' policy costings. A ''tired and reactive approach'' to law and order. Not enough focus on cost-of-living pressures.

The biggest problem, though, was the way policies were developed. The review found the former government made the fatal mistake of running a highly centralised and tightly media-managed policy strategy, which shut out caucus MPs and failed to resonate with voters.

Instead of seeking broad input from caucus, policies were largely driven by a selected group of senior ministers, spin doctors and advisers working out of premier John Brumby's private office.

As a result, many policies - with the exception of Labor's so-called ''boot camp'' strategy, which offered year 9 students two weeks out of the classroom to learn life skills - simply missed their mark.

As Noonan and Garrett put it: ''While balanced and responsible, there were very few surprises amongst Labor's policy offerings, with many considered to be merely an extension of Labor's existing government program and therefore lacking the crucial political edge required for a campaign.''

Andrews often says one of the few advantages about being in opposition is that you can choose your own timing. That probably explains why he has released only a handful of policies over the past 20 months. Among the sweeteners are a populist plan to make the Friday before AFL grand final day a public holiday; a pledge to scrap Baillieu's new building industry watchdog; and a ''three-strikes and you're out'' clause for sports clubs who break the state's sporting code of conduct. Headline-grabbing, but not exactly inspiring, is it?

Labor is right to wait until voters start paying attention before making key announcements. As its confusing stance on the east-west link during the Melbourne byelection showed, good policy development takes time and hard work.

The Noonan-Garrett review recommends a year-by-year strategy. This year is about getting the fundamentals right: rebuilding links with business and community, talking to constituents, recruiting ''the next generation of experts'' to help with ideas.

Next year will be spent developing the policy platform. That means more town-hall style forums (Andrews has promised 100 by the end of 2013; he's done 15 so far), ''round-table'' discussions with industry groups, and more ALP policy committee meetings.

In 2014, it's game on. Expect to see a better focus on local issues, a strong emphasis on jobs and education, and less of the ''bureaucratic and process-based language'' that became such an annoying characteristic of the last government. Winning back the confidence of voters is an uphill battle, and Andrews know this only too well.

But think about this: while Labor governments in NSW and Queensland faced electoral wipeouts, in Victoria Baillieu controls Parliament with a one-seat majority. If Andrews can maintain party unity, lift his profile and develop a positive agenda that presents him as more than just an opposition attack dog, he might just be in with a chance.